Category: Stuff that just happens

The floor is not a shelf, I tell daughter 4, looking at her pile of school uniform, strewn across the bedroom. I enter daughter 2’s room, the floor is not a shelf, I’m now raising my voice, as a wet towel is staring at me from below. I go into daughter 3’s room, I am now screaming the mantra that my Nanna used to say in her lilting, Scottish accent, THE FLOOR IS NOT A SHELF! I’m sick of sniffing knickers, like a dog on heat. If they are dirty, put them in the dirty laundry bag, I drone on, you can’t miss it – it says: ‘dirty laundry’ on the front. Leave your rooms tidy, I yell in a now slightly demonic and threatening tone, that I feel sure will have some impact. 

They leave for school like a storm cloud, moving out of the door and down the road, creating thunderous noise and sparks of lightening, as they move on mass, leaving peace and tranquility behind. 

I go and check their rooms. There are lumps under daughter 1’s duvet. I presume it’s fat cat, scaredy cat and possibly partner, hiding from the storm. I go into daughter 2’s room and see similar lumps. I’m now suspicious and pull back the duvet to reveal a wet towel. I march back into daughter 1’s room, whip back the duvet to reveal half her wardrobe plus a collection of biscuit wrappers. I peel underwear off the floor, as well as single, lonely, dirty socks. At Christmas I adorned a Christmas tree with all the odd socks I had collected since September. I always believe in carrying a threat through. 

Partner hands me a cup of tea, with the same look on his face as the morning before and the morning before that. What did you threaten them with this morning? he asks wearily. Airing their dirty linen in public I reply – job done. 

Walking past an off licence today, I saw a sign in the window: did you know that 2 to 3 glasses of wine per day can reduce your risk of giving a s**t. I like this sentiment, as it is the slightly rebellious antidote to the chief medical officer’s statement today, that every time we lift a glass of wine to our lips, we must think about how that glass is taking us a step closer to cancer. Cancer is horrible and scary, but the thought of being held to ransom through fear on a Friday night, glass in hand, is even more scary. 

Before I cross a road, I don’t immediately think of death. I think about assessing the risk in order to prevent death. I suppose that this is essentially what the CMO is telling us to do, but it gets our middle class drinkers’ backs up. Remember your Green Cross Code, as Tufty Fluffytail can’t always be looking out for you, but the Nanny State can.

In today’s paper it also says that an extra hour spent sitting down over the course of each week is linked with a 22% increased risk of having type 2 diabetes. So I shall make sure that I drink at least 3 of my allowable 14 units this week, whilst standing. This, coupled with the fact that red wine is apparently good for you and an article last week stating that half a bottle of red wine a day keeps you trim, especially when washed down with a couple of cups of coffee, all makes me agree with Dad when he used to tell me: you can always find a newspaper article to back up your vices. I have to say though, I am struggling to find articles condoning chewing pen lids, picking the fruit bits out of the Fruit and Fibre packet late at night and using daughter 1’s Lady Million perfume without her knowledge, but I do know for sure, that in this house, people are watching me…

I have noticed that I am reducing the lives of the people around me, into a series of emoticons. As I summarise their life and emotions into this neat little package, I do wonder whether the receiver is irritated by it. Friend has flu, I have the answer: not sympathy and flowers, but an emoticon with a mask over its face, which is basically telling her: don’t come near me or my family at this time. Friends’ entire family is struck down by flu. Do I offer to cook them dinners for a week? No, I text 4 emoticons with masks over their faces. 

Similarly love. Love has been reduced to easy sound bites through the emoticon. I can send partner nine different hearts in two seconds flat to illustrate my deep and sincere love…so much easier than organising a romantic meal out and we certainly don’t have time for dirty weekends, so the aubergine and cherry emoticons just have to do. 

I find myself getting irritated when I can’t quite find the one to fit the sentiment. I scroll through, searching for that perfect emoji, that will save me the bother of a phone call. 

Sometimes I receive a text with an emoji that I don’t know and I spend ages trying to work out what spin the sender is putting on their words. It’s easy to get paranoid with emojis: they have the ability to change meaning, to convey irony, sarcasm and wit in a way that leaves me wondering how the Brontë sisters managed without them. But now I have discovered that there is an emojipedia. Look out – coming to a library near you! 

Emoticons roll with the times: one for a man and woman kissing, but also for two men and two women kissing. But where is the one that says: ‘just piss off and leave me alone’? We need one that sticks two fingers up. I was amused when I got my new phone and saw that I can now add skin tone to my hand signals. This would be useful if I want to give someone the ‘V’. I’d choose dark brown and say, ‘that wasn’t me!’

Teeth are falling out of mouths in our house at a rate of one a day: daughters 3 and 4 both lost a tooth this week, as did dog 2 who is teething. Step son has been told he may have to lose a few and seemed genuinely surprised when the dentist told him the reason for this was sugar. Mine are all still in tact at time of writing this, but there is definitely something in the air. 

A year ago the tooth fairy stopped needing the teeth in our house for her fairy dust and now the loss of a tooth is just met with: ‘give us a pound please, mum’ and ‘shall I put it in the bin.’

Partner and I were truly shocking tooth fairies. Our record for leaving a tooth under a pillow was four nights – the tooth fairy was very busy that week too. 

Tooth fairy scenarios became very elaborate with daughter 4 and that piled on the pressure. Letters were written, requiring replies and once a walnut shell bath was left out, with water and a piece of cloth as a towel. 

I tried to stop being Father Christmas last year too. I thought I’d kill off two logistical birds with one stone. However, this was met with cries of mutiny, resulting in partner and I still creeping around the landing at 1 in the morning, eating mince pies, feeding the dogs carrots and drinking whisky. At least now though, we get proper thanks for our efforts – it used to kill me watching them open presents I’d sweated over choosing and buying and some bloke who doesn’t exist getting all the credit. 

I jump, confidently onto the scales for my final January weigh in. I’ve put on 2 kilos, I wail to partner, so loudly that the kids all come running in. Partner is laughing. I’m outraged – how can he be laughing. The scales have just torn my world apart. I’ve been denying myself bread and potatoes for four weeks. It must be the granola, I scream accusingly at daughter 1, who is lined up with her sisters at my bedroom door, eyeballing my naked misery. Or it could be the fact that dog 1’s paw was on the scales, partner is exploding with mirth.
‘Watch out boy she’ll chew you up’ the kids all chorus and then scarper.

I don’t know why you’re worried anyway, partner says, as only a man would, apparently big bums are still in for this year. Dog 1 is cocking his head to one side and has his worried face on. Be afraid, I thought to myself, be very afraid.

 

We are finally getting rid of January. It’s so drawn out with its 31 days, that it eeks out every last bit of spirit that’s in you. Perhaps soon we can at last move on from meals adorned with quinoa and daughter 1’s obsessive exercise regime, which has involved ever increasing amounts of burpees being performed loudly, late into the night.  ‘You’re gonna reach greatness!’ Mr Motivator has been telling her all month, ‘you are sweating beads of greatness!’

It occurs to me that in January’s dying hours, I should try out some of this language in my Taekwon-do classes, although I don’t think I could pull them off in quite the same way as he can. I can’t think of many people who can sidle up to a lady at the back of a class and get away with singing, ‘you’re a man eater,’ as she performs her jumping lunges, but somehow he does. 

Looking for inspiration to get me through the first half of February to Valentine’s Day, where there’s finally an excuse for champagne, I look up the rest of the lyrics: 

The woman is wild

A she-cat tamed

By the purr of a Jaguar

Now you’re talking, I think. Let’s go make February rock! 

Daughter 3 is hoping, in the future, to pursue her dream of going to an American university on a football scholarship. But you don’t like flying, I say to her. Have you thought about that? 

Partner and I are talking about it. I hope that it’s not my fault that she doesn’t like flying, I tell him. (Because I am of the opinion that every plane I go on is going to fall out of the sky). I have been really careful to hide my fear from her, I continue. She says she doesn’t like the confined space. Partner looks at me. You don’t think that’s got something to do with that time you left her locked in the car went inside, cooked the dinner and only when you were serving it up did you notice she wasn’t there, he questions. Or that other time when you left her in the car and only realised she hadn’t come in when she poked her head through the cat flap. Or it could be that time…ok, ok, I say crossly. Isn’t it just the parents’ role to feel constantly guilty for psychologically scarring their kids for life, I say, in an attempt to vindicate myself, but they then have to find their own path through? Yes, he replies, but isn’t it also the parents’ job to help them through the obstacles and not to put them there in the first place. 

I had a bad feeling about this morning, when daughter 4 took off her shoes for the orthopedic consultant, only to reveal, in addition to an extra bone and dreadful pronation, two large holes in her tights, with her pink socks bursting through.

From this point it was difficult to concentrate on anything he was saying, but the upshot seemed to be further insoles, built up shoes and if all else fails, plaster.

We were ushered to the splint room, where I administered more apologies for holed tights. We need her shoes, the orthotics lady told us, you can drop them in later if you like. No, I thought, I don’t like. This is my fourth visit to the hospital in as many weeks and we don’t live next door. We’ll manage, I said stoically, throwing daughter 4 a ‘don’t argue’ look. In fact, her look was more one of surprise. How? Orthotics lady and daughter 4 chorused. We’ll sort it, I said, as I bundled a bewildered daughter 4, shoeless, out of the room.

Outside the hospital the remains of the American storm Snowzilla was raging. Why can’t our storms have cool names like that and not Frank and Gertrude. I googled it once and discovered that the name for H is my ex’s name. I read the description of criteria for naming a storm: To be given a name, a storm must ….have the potential to cause either medium or high impact. Yes, I thought to myself.

Back to the slight logistical problem of driving rain, high winds, no shoes and a walk to the car. Wait here, I tell daughter 4, I’ll bring the car to you. Except in my haste to battle Snowzilla, I forget to pay for the ticket. I get to the barrier, cars backing up behind me. It tells me my free time has expired. I need to pay at a machine. I get out the car to explain to the four cars behind. They back up for me. I am faced with a dilemma, I can’t leave the car park, but there are no free spaces to park and the ticket machine is outside of the car park. I spot a disabled space and grab it. The lady in the space next door gives me a look. I run past shouting through the howling wind: I’m having a bad day, as she pulls her disabled child out of the back seat – I feel bad.

I pay for my ticket, screech out of the disabled bay and the car park to rescue daughter 4. It is lucky she is not yet a teenager – standing in a packed hospital entrance lobby for ten minutes with holed tights and pink socks would have killed her. I block the ambulance entrance to piggyback her to the car.

On the way to school she is trying to work out the least embarrassing way to reach her trainers. They are on the second floor, she moans, and I will have to walk into a classroom full of people in my tights. Holed tights, I correct her, just to remind her that this morning isn’t going well because of her tights.

With daughter 4 safely piggybacked into school, I am able to reflect on the morning. It is only now that it dawns on me that I am back at the hospital on Friday to see that charming consultant about my shoulders and I could have safely delivered the shoes. I think I am just hard wired for a challenge.

Daughter 1 has stepped her healthy delights up a gear. She has found a recipe for granola bars on You Tube and led me to believe that they are healthy. She brought partner and I some of the mixture to try, as we sat and watched tv last night. It was delicious. Are you sure that’s healthy, I asked, rather surprised that it tasted so good. In my experience, anything that is really healthy tastes pretty awful, once you step back and see it for what it really is and not with rose tinted diet glasses on. I quite happily ate quinoa for weeks before our summer holiday last year, telling myself and everyone else how good it tasted. But once we hit Spain, I was eating double the amount of chorizo to make up for the assault of blandness my taste buds had endured.

They are healthy, daughter 1 replied assuredly, they’ve got almonds in. I asked for some more mixture. Partner wanted more too – it just tasted so good. I’d better make a second batch, she said, as she watched the gooey substance disappear into us at a rate of knots.

Daughter 1 went to bed. Don’t eat any granola bars mum, she said, as she disappeared upstairs, I’ve counted them, I know what you’re like. Partner went to bed. I was left alone downstairs. I found myself looking for the granola bars. She had hidden them in Tupperware, but I spotted them and they were now cut into neat little bars. There was one irregular shaped one, it was mine!

Daughter 1 comes down for breakfast. You know those granola bars mum…I was thinking about it and they aren’t really healthy at all, because of the honey and the brown sugar, the desiccated coconut and the golden syrup that’s in them.

I sigh. Back to the quinoa and rose tinted glasses.